


How Do I Live?

by MysticallyGallavich



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Love, M/M, happyending, healthscare, married, prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-20 04:01:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20668970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MysticallyGallavich/pseuds/MysticallyGallavich
Summary: Ian gets the scare of his life when his husband Mickey collapses. What is wrong? What is happening? As Ian faces the possibility he could lose his husband he struggles with how important life would be without him.





	How Do I Live?

**Author's Note:**

> How do I Live - Trisha Yearwood (Or Leann Rimes) 
> 
> Prompted by a friend who is no longer in the fandom.

How Do I Live

_If I had to live without you, what kind of life would that be? _

Thirty Years.

Thirty years of fighting, and laughing and hurting and loving. It was a lifetime to some, It was only a moment to Ian Gallagher at this moment. As he stood on the sidewalk his life seemed to speed up and slow down at the same time. His husband, the love of his life was being carried away on a stretcher. He should know what to do, he had been an EMT for a couple of years back in his younger days. He had been trained, he still remembered his training but with the man who was his everything there, hurting, lifeless, he didn’t have a clue on what to do.

_Ian stood on the corner just down the street from the Kash and Grab, watching. He knew that Mickey could see him, he knew what he was doing but he wouldn’t acknowledge it. That was fine by Ian, he didn’t need anything from the dirty, crass, boy, he just wanted to watch him. To remember what it was like in the few moments where they were connected. The moments before they fucked, the fire, and the intensity, he imagined what it would be like if it was different. If Mickey ever let him in. He would never let him go. He would hold on to every moment, until the end of time. If only Mickey could be his, for more than a few lingering moments. _

Ian stepped on the rig, the old feeling of excitement not there, he just sat there holding Mickey’s hand. Praying to a God he didn’t know if he believed in, to any being that existed to save this man. He wasn’t ready for this. They were supposed to have another thirty years together, complaining at each other. Mickey was supposed to be the grumpy old man sitting in his chair yelling about how it was when he was in his prime. How the kids were ruining the world or some shit. He didn’t care what he said, as long as he was there with him. They hadn’t had enough time of just being happy like they had been the last fifteen years.

_ He had kissed him. Ian sat breathing deeply at night where nobody could pay attention to him. Sure he had been shot directly after. It might be a bad omen, but the way Mickey had smiled up at him before he went home. That meant something. It meant everything. They weren’t just…whatever they were before. He didn’t need Mickey to say it. He could feel it, Mickey gave a damn, maybe it was just a little but to him it was everything. _

The rush of the next few hours was a mess. What the hell had happened? They were standing there one minute, loving each other, enjoying the morning and the next Mickey had just collapsed, he hadn’t been shot, he just went down. What the hell was happening and why wasn’t anyone telling him a damn thing.

The rush of all of their moments together in their lives came at Ian like a freight train. Falling in love with Mickey, walking away from Mickey when he married Svetlana, and then coming back and feeling less than until he had realized that maybe Mickey had actually fallen in love with him too. Ian looked up as his family came into the waiting room, piling around, he smiled lightly at them. There was a time they wouldn’t have shown up here for Mickey, and barely for him but now they did. Just like most of Mickey’s family, who had come in shortly before them. All except Mandy. He missed his old best friend that had held him up in his younger years. He missed her dearly but she no longer lived here. He didn’t know If he would make it down. But he hoped she would be able to.

“She’s on her way.” Lip had whispered to Ian and he looked up wondering what the hell his brother was talking about. “Mandy. I just talked to her, she’s coming, of course, she’s coming.” He smiled a little nodding. His brother could always read him like a book most times, especially now. He was kind of predictable at this point, wasn’t he? There hadn’t been any drama in his life in years. Not since he had been sick and stupid enough to let the man he loved slip from his fingers. Always thinking he wanted more. His sick brain was an asshole and his medicated brain was a bigger asshole. Even in recent years, fully medicated and stable most of the time there were still times when Ian questioned whether some of his decisions were his own. It was usually Mickey that convinced him otherwise, that he was still himself.

The minutes passed feeling like hours, days, maybe even years. Ian sat in the waiting room staring at the blank wall, memories flooding him still. All the minutes he missed with Mickey, all the days without him in his space. Every moment when he pretended he didn’t need his lover, his best friend, his everything in his life. He wondered often how he could have ever lived without him because he knew now that he never could again. He couldn’t live without the man that he had shared his life with. He needed Mickey. He was breathing heavily, by the time someone shook him. He looked up after long moments of trying to breathe to find his and Mickey’s friend standing over him. Bellerina…or Lina rather. Mickey liked to call her Ballerina because he thought it was funny to see her nose scrunch up in what he called “that funny shape”. He smiled at the memory for a moment before he focused and tried to hear her words.

“Ian…Ian. Look at me, right here, focus on me. Not on anyone else, not on the memories. Right here, on me.” She spoke smoothly and it was easy to see how she was good at being a psychologist. He had sometimes wished to be her patient before he had found a stable therapist. It was for the best she had told him. Mickey had said the same thing. “If Ballerina is your therapist I’ll have to be nice to her and pissing her off is way too much fun for that man.” Man. That is what Mickey always called him, it was very rarely babe, and not so much with the creative nicknames anymore unless he was just feeling particularly creative that day. It was Ian…or Man. On the rare occasion that Mickey had ever called him something indearing such as babe, and the one and only time he had called him baby, meant one of two things. He was either in trouble, or something was wrong. He shook his head focusing back on Lina.

“I’m here, I’m focusing.” He spoke softly and she shook her head.

“Liar. You’re focusing on him. I need you to take care of you. I swear to god if Mighty Mouse wakes up and you’ve hyperventilated into a hospital bed, I’m not gonna be the one to tell him.” He chuckled.

He spent the next hour listening to his friend, listening to whatever it was she was saying to focus on anything but what was happening beyond those doors, happening to his husband. He was losing his damn mind.

“Listen here you prick. You go back there and find out how my brother is doing before I take a steak knife to your fucking soul.” Ian suddenly looked up and started laughing out loud.

“And that would be Mandy right?” Lina asked him and he nodded trying to get up to get to her before she got arrested. The Milkovich siblings hadn’t seen the inside of a jail cell in many years, besides that one time Mickey got arrested for defacing public property a few years back. “ I got it,” Lina said getting up to bring Mandy to him, probably quietly reminding her that it wasn’t the time or place to go ballistic.

The next morning Ian was sitting beside Mickey’s bed laying his head on his chest. Listening to the heartbeat, not on the machine but the one beating in his ear or was that his own. It had been a long night, a long horrible night and he needed to see mickey’s eyes again. He didn’t understand most of what the doctors said to him. It was some kind of stroke. It was impossible, Mickey was strong, vibrant…a fucking force of nature. How could his body turn on him like this? How could any of this happen? He felt the tears falling down his face, begging the world for whatever force could bring his husband back to him.

_If you leave, you would take away everything_

Ian was holding Mickey’s hand, and watching TV, steadily ignoring the family members bickering with each other. When they weren’t here he could silently pretend they were in their living room, cuddling on the couch. When they were all here it was hitting him that Mickey had been unconscious for days. It was driving him crazy, he wanted to shout, tell them to go away but that would be cruel, they all loved mickey too. Mickey would want them here, wouldn’t he? He chuckled at himself, no he wouldn’t. As if Mickey could hear him he felt a twinge like Mickey was grasping at his hand. He felt that sometimes, the doctors said it was a reflex. 

“Would…you all fuck off.” Came the very low barely-there voice of the one and only Mickey Milkovich, and suddenly Ian turned to his husband. The room was still chattering, so he was sure he was the only one that heard the voice. He looked down to find Mickey’s annoyed eyes trained on him, Ian smiled. Leaning to him, wanting just one moment. 

“I love you, baby,” Ian said softly and Mickey held his hand a little tighter.

“I love you too Asshole.” That was all Ian needed in the entire world before he stood up and got the doctor, and before he let his husband kick his own family out of the room.

Which he did within minutes. Mickey hated to be vulnerable, he had promised himself a long time ago that he never would be. Not for anyone but Ian. Ian was different. That’s why Ian was the only person he let in that room while Ian cried and Mickey might have a little too. By the time Mickey let them back in his room his stone, nothing can get at me face was back on.

Even if he was scared to death, not even his husband would know that not until he was ready to share it with him. He, however, did silently promise to do whatever the stupid pig of a doctor told him to do so that Ian could have him as long as possible. He would do anything for that stupid red-head. Even if it included frequent visits to that stupid doctor.

(Five Years Later)

“Mickey!!” Ian called from the living room, and Mickey peaked out around the corner.

“The fuck you want?” Mickey said grumpily looking back over his shoulder to the meat he was cooking.

“Babe!” Ian whined and Mickey rolled his eyes.

“I swear to god if I come in there and I burn this chicken. I will cut you.” He grumbled making his way to Ian, standing behind him on the couch. Ian held up his beer to him and turned and smiled softly and Mickey rolled his eyes.

“Where did you get that?” he grumbled.

“umm….casper?” he giggled. Fucking hell he was drunk.

“YEVGENY MILKOVICH!?!” he screamed knowing exactly who gave his husband the beer. His son was in town for some kind of conference for work, and the shit was always doing shit like this.

“What dad?” He asked coming into the room with two more beers. Mickey grabbed one out of his hand.

“I don’t fuckin think so. You’ve given him enough.” Yev rolled his eyes. “Now go in there and finish the Chicken so I can make out with my drunk husband,” Yev whined, suddenly looking 12 instead of the fully grown adult he now was.

“That’s what you get.” He said bounding over the couch and kissing his redhead.

**Author's Note:**

> I know I'm slacking. For those that have asked about anything that is unfinished, they will all continue. I will not stop writing until everything I have currently is done. :)


End file.
